


A Little Like Mutant Manifestation

by howlikeagod



Category: Marvel 616, Young Avengers
Genre: Ace spectrum character, Canon Compliant, Demisexuality, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, comics are a Mess let's just pretend i know what i'm talking about, edit: yes i realize i reference nate as if he's still part of the team, graphic depictions of nerdiness, i mean i think so?, sarah is a Cool Mom, you can pry him from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7621462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Billy pulls back a little (normal), and grins down at Teddy. His face is flushed (normal), his hair is a godawful mess (completely normal), and Teddy wants him to take his clothes off (not normal </i>at all).<i></i><br/><i>That desire slams into him like a semi-truck and leaves him gasping. He’s lived his whole life a little too aware of where his eyes catch, on the lips and hands of other boys, where his thoughts wander to kissing and holding in the darkest corners he can find. It’s never been more than that.</i></p>
<p>Or: Teddy is demi and in love and figuring it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Like Mutant Manifestation

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is largely semi-autobiographical (in a handwavey, stories-tell-us-truths-regardless-of-how-they-actually-happened Tim O’Brien sort of way) about my own experiences as a demisexual person. It is not intended to reflect the lives of all asexual-spectrum people, as we are a diverse bunch with huge variation in how we relate to attraction and sexuality. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Marvel, bring back the Young Avengers.

Teddy’s mom is working late, they’re alone in the apartment, and Billy is kissing him.

Billy is kissing him open-mouthed, gentle, with the line of his body warm and heavy against Teddy. Billy is making quiet, happy little sounds in his throat. Teddy is humming in response and carding a hand through his hair and feeling _incredibly_ loved.

This isn’t strange or unique in and of itself; they’re in each other’s space a _lot,_ swift pecks to the cheek and hour-long makeouts and hand-holding and cuddling during a movie and standing way closer than is strictly necessary.

Teddy’s mom works a lot. Billy comes over a lot. Kissing happens.

Billy pulls back a little (normal), and grins down at Teddy. His face is flushed (normal), his hair is a godawful mess (completely normal), and Teddy wants him to take his clothes off (not normal _at all)_.

That desire slams into him like a semi-truck and leaves him gasping. He’s lived his whole life a little too aware of where his eyes catch, on the lips and hands of other boys, where his thoughts wander to kissing and holding in the darkest corners he can find. It’s never been more than that.

Even with Greg, when everything was too desperate and crumbling and he thought if he just found the right _shape,_ then maybe lips or a hand would find their way to his, ideas of what came after hands-and-lips were hazy and not-thought-about for reasons he couldn’t name.

But with Billy, every moment is bathed in light--sometimes literally, of course, but not only that--and Teddy doesn’t feel the need to hide anymore. He can let Billy reside in the forefront of his mind without the urge to cover his face like it’s written there. He tells his mom about their dates, holds his hand in front of friends, and sometimes, falling asleep clutching at the pillow Billy had laughed into while watching Eli kick Teddy’s ass at _Left 4 Dead_ hours earlier, he tests out how the word _forever_ feels.

He loves the angles of Billy’s face and the warm weight of him pressing Teddy down into his mattress. He loves Billy’s hands. He loves Billy’s voice when they’re alone and it gets low and soft. He loves being with him, no matter where they are or what they’re doing, he just never thought… never _thought_ \--

“Teddy, are you okay?” Billy asks. Teddy realizes he’s been openly gaping.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he responds reflexively. Teddy swallows. “Do you want to, um.” There’s no way for that sentence to end, every idea being too new, too strange, too not the Teddy he thought he could be. “Do you want to watch Community? I feel like watching Community.”

Billy looks a little thrown, but it’s not the first time Teddy has switched gears like this in the middle of something physical and Billy is good at rolling with it.

“Sure,” he says, climbing off Teddy agreeably. He adjusts his jeans as he does so, and that hits Teddy all over again with a wave of _God, is he--? Would I be--?_ that he hides behind the excuse of looking for his phone before they head into the living room.

They’ve both seen every episode at least twice, of course, so the rest of the evening is taken up by bickering about which one of them would be Abed and who that makes Troy--

”You play sports!”

“Troy is more than his athletics, Billy. And anyway, I like B-movies more than you do,”

\--until Teddy’s mom gets home and asks if Billy wants to stay for dinner.

“I actually told my mom I’d be around tonight,” he says mournfully. “Dad’s trying out a recipe he saw on Pinterest. I think there are plantains involved, but I didn’t want to ask for too many details.”

“I’ll walk you out.” Teddy stands up a little too eagerly. He has to suppress a blush when he sees the teasing look in his mother’s eye. He’d call her out on living vicariously through him because she can’t get a date, but with how much she works and how tired she is he can’t bring himself to joke.

They half-continue the argument from earlier all the way down the stairs--not the elevator, which has been broken for six days and which they usually take because it’s a longer wait and therefore an excuse to keep talking and casually bumping their shoulders together--and out to the front of Teddy’s building.

At the door, Billy turns to him with a glint in his eye and says, “Can we at least agree that Cassie is Annie?” and Teddy has to kiss him.

His hands are on Billy’s waist. His hands are cupping the curve of Billy’s hipbones, which reminds him of putting them there earlier which reminds him of what he was _feeling_ earlier, which is a terrifying kind of heat blooming in his abdomen. He’s not sure what to do with that, especially not here, where they are _literally_ in public and not in Teddy’s room where he at least has the freedom to maybe freak out just a little.

But Billy’s lips under his are a grounding force, as ever. He focuses on that.

“See you before school?” Billy doesn’t bother to move his mouth away from Teddy’s. Teddy smiles, letting his teeth just barely brush Billy’s bottom lip.

“Be there bright and early,” he promises. Billy lets out a shuddery breath and sneaks in another kiss. Then he’s turning, walking away down the sidewalk with his hands stuffed in the pocket of his hoodie and a spring in his step like he might take off flying any second.

That, Teddy muses on the way back up, would be a much more efficient way to get to school than taking the subway. He’d be tempted to try it if his wings were as subtle as Billy’s magic.

When he lets himself back into the apartment, he’s greeted by the muffled sound of his mother humming in the kitchen.

“Teddy?” she calls down what passes for a hallway in their four-room space.

“That’s me,” he replies, kicking off his shoes. “Do you want help with dinner?”

She rolls her eyes fondly as he steps through the empty doorframe between the kitchen and the hall.

“Look at that, I raised a gentleman,” she says. “Here, chop this.”

Suddenly his hands are full of celery and he’s trying not to hip-check his mother while pulling out a cutting board in their postage-stamp-sized kitchen. She starts humming again, snatches of a tune he thinks he should recognize.

This is calming in a way nothing else quite is. Even on his worst days, before and Before, when he would feel too strange and small to hold his head up or unsure of whose skin he should be living in, there was always a space for him here, carved out in just the right size. Teddy has never felt ill-formed standing beside his mother. He has never needed to shrink or grow or bend to fit around her--she’d know it if he tried, anyway. She’d sense it, in the way she promises isn’t a mutant thing, is just a mom thing, is just an _Altman_ thing, and stroke a hand through his hair and say, “Don’t apologize for the shape you take. You’re always _you,_ honey. Baby, sweet--”

“--heart. Teddy?” She’s giving him an odd look. He shakes his head and sucks in a breath.

“Sorry, I was completely spaced out. What were you saying?” He scrapes the finished celery into a bowl and hands it off. She gives him an awkward smile, like she’s gearing up to say something neither of them wants to hear.

“So,” she begins. “Billy was here earlier.” Teddy nods. There is a pause, although what it’s meant to communicate he has no idea. Did somebody leave the toilet seat up? Did Billy forget to take his shoes off again and track dirt across the carpet? He’s running through the possibilities, though none of them seem severe enough for a dinnertime lecture, when she asks, “Do you need anything?”

Teddy blinks.

“I was hoping for dinner at some point,” he says, glancing at the simmering pot his mom is currently neglecting. She laughs.

It’s her my-kid-is-weird laugh, the one she used when he was eleven and wanted to put his Buffy doll on top of the Christmas tree. It’s a loving sound, he knows that, but he’s lost as to why it’s happening _now._

“I meant you and Billy,” she says. An eyebrow is raised, like they’re in on some joke. “Are you two being safe?”

For a second, he thinks she’s talking about the superhero thing. She found out, somehow, and she’s going to tell him to stop. He’s about to stammer an apology for not telling her sooner, to explain that it’s not about trying to be like his idols, not about trying to be _like_ anyone, not this time--

Then it clicks.

“You don’t have to worry about us,” he says, voice a little rushed and higher than he’d like it to be. “Like you said, you raised a gentleman.” What does that even _mean?_ “Do you want me to set the table?” He’s already pulling two plates out of the cupboard and hustling off to the living room-slash-dining room-slash-mom’s bedroom.

He hopes she thinks he’s just feeling awkward. The bright flush he didn’t hide fast enough probably plays right into her assumptions, so at least he won’t have to actually _explain._

It figures, of course, that today would be the day Sarah Altman decides to try and give her son the Condom Talk. The one day he can’t just smile and say something about how they’re “not there yet, taking it slow, but thanks, mom.”

And he should still be able to say that, shouldn’t he? They haven’t actually _done_ anything, not really--Teddy always knew, in a distant sort of way, that Billy wanted to. It’s just never felt important or urgent or immediately _possible_ like it does now.

The potential has been there, Teddy’s not naive, but… But.

He barely makes eye contact with his mom throughout dinner. She’s smirking, which he wishes she wouldn’t do because she has entirely the wrong idea anyway, and for some reason that trips him up.

He makes polite noises about the pasta, she points out how the celery really brings it all together, and soon enough he’s mumbling about homework and escaping to his room.

He _does_ have homework to do, as it happens, but focusing on logarithms isn't Teddy's favorite pastime under normal circumstances.

“Log base B of two equals the square root…” he mutters, pencil jammed in his mouth. It’s the third time he’s re-read this problem.

_...Billy, last week, with his mouth hot against Teddy’s neck and his hands under Teddy’s shirt asking, “Do you not like this? I can--”_

_“No, I mean. My mom will be home soon.”_

He punches a few keys on his calculator.

_...The look his mom gives them when she comes home and Billy’s there, like she was almost expecting to walk in on a compromising situation just because they’re dating, just because they’re alone._

He erases his last answer, noticing he switched the exponent and the base again.

_...Kate’s joke about Billy’s old codename._

Teddy flips his textbook closed with a huff. He’ll finish the last few problems tomorrow.

\--

Now that he’s had the chance to sleep on it, Teddy feels nowhere near as coiled-up and raw as he did the night before.

It was a lot to process all at once, sure. He hadn’t realized how much all the little assumptions build up, putting an image of himself in other people’s eyes that he hasn’t done anything to create. But a new day is dawning, he’ll be walking to school with Billy just as soon as he reaches the door a block ahead of him in the spring morning mist, and--

Crap.

Billy.

The reason for Teddy’s crisis and unexpected reevaluation of who he is and how he relates to the world. Also, his boyfriend.

His palms sweat a little, although the air is cool. Teddy doesn’t know what he’s expecting. The whole whatever-it-was the night before lasted fifteen seconds, tops. It was probably a one time thing, a fluke, a weird by-product of how impossibly hot he burns for Billy.

He’s still scared of it.

Teddy reaches the door and manages to--mostly--convince himself that this is any normal day. He’ll see his boyfriend, hold his hand, talk about things that matter and things that don’t and maybe kiss him in the hustle of the hallway before they part for separate classes.

His knuckles knock against the door. His heart knocks against his ribs.

It opens.

The sight of Billy _doesn’t_ send him reeling, which is something of a relief. He feels the same as always: a floating brightness behind his sternum when Billy’s eyes light up to mirror his own; a prickle that feels a lot like giddiness tingling up the back of his neck; various symptoms of a word he hasn’t said yet.

“G- _ood_ morning,” Billy says, sing-song like the dork he is. Teddy grins.

“Morning. Ready to head out?” He hitches up his backpack as Billy swings his own over his shoulder.

“Absolutely. Get me out of here before the brats wake up. I drank the last of the orange juice and I _don’t_ want to see the shitfit they’ll throw over that.” He hops down the steps after Teddy and holds a hand out. Expectant. Instinctive.

Teddy puts his hand in Billy’s. Accepting. Instinctual.

“I saw another one of those guys with a ‘the end is nigh’-type sign on my way home last night,” Billy says by way of conversation.

“So, another Tuesday?”

Billy gently knocks against his shoulder. “Yeah, smartass, but this one had _Doctor Doom_ on it, and I was like, at least this guy’s putting his money where his mouth is, you know?”

Teddy nods sagely.

“Supervillain betting pool.”

Billy throws his head back and laughs. This is good. This is _easy,_ like always, falling into a natural rhythm with him.

It gets decidedly less easy when they reach the front steps of school. Billy let go of Teddy’s hand at some point, in order to accommodate an expressive gesture without which his words would have been entirely meaningless, and a wave of other students separates them. By the time the flood parts, Billy has made it to the top of the stairs while Teddy stays walled in at the bottom.

This puts him about eye-level with Billy’s hips. And listen--it’s not usually possible for someone to look sexy while wearing a backpack.

But Billy has one foot up on the top step, body half twisted around to look for Teddy, and his shirt is riding up just a little and his jeans are pulled snug against his thigh and his butt and--

_Oh._

Billy smiles when he sees Teddy. He makes a beckoning gesture, and _that,_  that should be a distraction, not something to make this worse. But it isn’t, and it does, and Teddy hustles up the steps, trying to tamp down the burning confusion he feels in every limb.

\--

Teddy is beginning to accept that this is probably going to keep happening.

He makes it through the school day with minimal fidgeting. He focuses on his classes, jokes around with some friends, and keeps most of his daily volume of Thinking About Billy within normal parameters.

But now they’re wrapping up a training session, and ever since that time Billy accidentally ended up buck-naked--except for the headpiece--in the middle of the practice room, he’s taken to changing out of his uniform the old fashioned way until he gets a better hang of the magic-phone-booth thing. Which is all well and good, except Billy is flushed and a little sweaty as he pulls the cape off. His hair is a staticky mess from the electricity that crackles around him when he flies, puffing out from his head in even more chaotic tufts than normal. As he leans forward to take off his shirt, the smooth lines of his back come into view.

Teddy swallows heavily as the _wanting_ he still isn’t prepared to handle hooks into his gut. This is nothing he hasn’t seen Billy do a dozen times before. It’s not a big deal.

Certain parts of his anatomy seem to think it’s a _very_ big deal, and Teddy whips his gaze away when he feels that. All he’s doing is _looking,_ for God’s sake. He and Billy look at each other every day, sometimes for long enough that Nate clears his throat pointedly and Eli ribs Teddy about it after. And sure, Billy gets a little pink in the face now and then and might have gone slack-jawed the first time Teddy took his own shirt off in front of him and there _was_ the jeans-adjusting situation last night--

The realization cracks over Teddy’s head like a raw egg, unexpected and discomfiting: is this how other people feel on a _regular basis?_

Is this how Billy feels about _him,_ all the time?

And in that one second, this has changed from something Teddy needs to ignore and will away to something he should maybe talk about. Figure out, hopefully, with someone it could actually impact.

“Hey, Billy?” he says, before he can chicken out. Shifting his vocal cords _just so_ to keep his voice steady is second nature to Teddy. “Do you want to come over tonight?”

“Yeah!” Billy is, thankfully, wearing a shirt when Teddy turns around. “Another night of avoiding responsibilities and looking at your face. _That,_ I can do.”

“If you have homework…” Teddy starts to say, although matching grins are growing across both their faces.

“It’s Thursday, Tee. That’s basically the weekend.”

“You’re a terrible influence.”  
  
“You love it.”

“Yeah,” Teddy says, slipping his hand into Billy’s. “You’re right.”

So here they are, an hour later, back in Teddy’s apartment, in Teddy’s room, on Teddy’s bed, and Teddy is trying to find enough courage to voice what he still doesn’t entirely understand.

“Billy,” he says, tone all wrong. Breathless and unsure, it sounds like a sigh.

“Yeah?” Billy ducks his head to take Teddy’s earlobe between his teeth. He likes playing with Teddy’s earrings, running his fingers or tongue along the row of them. It kind of tickles, which usually makes Teddy let out a distinctly unmanly giggle. He can’t help himself now, either, but he tries again to get Billy’s attention.

“Listen, I-- _hehe, stop that--_ I need to tell you something.”

Billy pulls back at that. His brows are furrowed together, a little divot between them Teddy wants to press his thumb against.

“What’s up?” He sounds concerned. He could always read Teddy better than Teddy wanted to be read.

“I-- Okay.” He shifts his legs so they’re both sitting on the edge of Teddy’s bed, side by side. He doesn’t know where to start, so he goes with: “I think I’m attracted to you.”

Billy blinks at him.

“I’m attracted to you too? I figured that’s why we were dating.” He’s turning it into a joke, a way to give Teddy an out. He’s going to be brave enough not to take it.

“Yeah, but I mean like.” Teddy scrubs a hand over his face, then leaves it there. Some things are easier in the dark, even if it’s small and self-created. “Sexually.”

“Ah,” Billy says. Teddy peeks out from between his fingers to see the tips of Billy’s ears, bright red. “Thanks. Um, right back atcha. But what’s the problem?”

Teddy lets his hands fall together into his lap.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt that before,” he says, honest in a way he didn’t know it would be. “I don’t just mean my feelings for you are a first, although they are. I mean I’m pretty sure I’ve _never_ felt--” Teddy makes a helpless sort of gesture at Billy, up and down the length of his body. “And I never put much thought into it, but most people-- They _want_ each other, right? In a way that’s not just closeness. And I _don’t._ ” He shrugs. “Until just now.”

“Hey.” Teddy’s hands have been lying against his thighs, palms up and fingers curved toward the ceiling. Billy grabs one and enfolds it in his own hands. He kisses the place where their hands join together. “There’s nothing wrong with what you feel! Or not feel, as the case may be. Or, used to not feel, but do now? No matter what your feelings are or aren’t, they’re fine.”

“But I don’t know how to _deal_ with this,” Teddy says. The words sigh out of him like a deflating balloon. “It’s like when we started the hero thing. I’ve had my powers for years, but yours just,” he spreads the fingers of his free hand in a gesture like an explosion, “and you had to learn to handle them all at once. I haven’t had any practice.”

Billy’s lips press together in the way they do when he’s trying not to laugh at one of Nate’s accidental blunders with navigating the present.

Teddy raises an eyebrow at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Sorry.” Billy ducks his head sheepishly. “It’s just, I’ve had a _lot_ of practice being attracted to you.”

“Oh.” There’s an Implication there, capital I, that nudges against the new awareness of Billy he’s starting to parse out. It makes him flush with something that isn’t quite embarrassment. “So what happens now?”

Billy shrugs.

“We keep on keepin’ on? This doesn’t have to change anything. We’re still, uh, building up to certain things, and it’s not like I have any more experience in the practical applications of attraction than you do.”

That makes Teddy smile.

“As long as you’re okay with the slow build,” he says. “I’m still working on the theoreticals.”

“I think I can handle that.” Billy grins, leaning in. “I’m great at theories.”

Teddy snorts softly. His forehead presses against Billy’s.

“I think your chem teacher would beg to differ.”

“Hey.” Billy’s voice is low, now. His breath tickles across Teddy’s lips. “I resent that.”

“Oh, do you now?”

“Mmhmm,” Billy hums. “I’m terribly hurt. You’re going to have to make it up to me somehow. I’m thinking dinner and a movie, or a new comic book. Probably _Animal Man,_ you know I’ve been meaning to read _Animal Man--_ ”

“Billy?” Teddy breathes.

“Yeah?” Billy bites his lip and inches closer.

Teddy takes Billy’s face tenderly between his hands. His thumbs run across Billy’s high cheekbones, and Billy’s eyes flutter closed. Their noses bump together, and just before finally kissing him, Teddy whispers:

“Grant Morrison is a hack.”

The sputtering laugh that goes straight into his mouth is worth it.

\--

(Later that night, after twenty minutes of hesitant googling, Teddy finds a word. Then he finds another word, under the umbrella of the first one.

He finds a label, and it adds the very last piece where he and his other words didn’t quite fit together before. _Alright,_ Teddy thinks.

“Alright.”)

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, Teddy knows full well that he would be Troy and Billy would be Abed. He’s just arguing for the hell of it.


End file.
